That’s it for the second volume of PSD Vault Flickr Group showcase! Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational. I would love to hearing from you about what you think of those works, just drop a comment below :)

]]>https://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/best-psd-design-inspirations-on-flicker-part-2/feed/0aguswebdesigntecnologiaproject-1-page_1twilight-dreamerundergroundc4dcollisionone-daymabysans-titre2k1splintersae_bwfutbolwhere-the-wild-roses-growStationary Style Collectionshttps://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/stationary-style-collections/
https://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/stationary-style-collections/#commentsMon, 12 Sep 2011 13:01:26 +0000http://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/?p=463]]>By the way, here is something I found on the FAQ section of their website:

WTF!? Another gallery?

Yes, another gallery. We felt that all the other ones lacked in different areas. That’s why we have created Stationery Style. Easy-on-the-eye, user-friendly resourse, for creatives to share ideas, and get inspired. Enjoy!

– Stationary Style

Alright enough talks … here goes the list, enjoy :)

Ok this concludes the Seeking Inspiration – Part IV: Stationary Style Collections. Hope you enjoy this post and find those works inspirational :)

]]>https://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/stationary-style-collections/feed/0aguswebdesign101ideastype-tipscmykvw_trucks___print_by_singletreechiefbcfidopinkpartyoutermillsony_ericsson_s500i_by_eduardobrapreviewhoney_0scentplicity8march_by_dr4oztruitioncurrent-accountSix High Quality Photoshop Tutorial Sites Apart From PSDTUTS.com – Part IIhttps://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/six-high-quality-photoshop-tutorial-sites-apart-from-psdtuts-com-%e2%80%93-part-ii/
https://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/six-high-quality-photoshop-tutorial-sites-apart-from-psdtuts-com-%e2%80%93-part-ii/#commentsMon, 12 Sep 2011 12:59:55 +0000http://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/?p=503]]>Welcome to Part II of the “Six High Quality Photoshop Tutorial Sites Apart From PSDTUTS.com” here on PSD Vault! I decided to make this post in conjunction with my previous post regarding the same topic. There are just so many other great Photoshop Tutorial sites out there providing tons of tips and tricks about Photoshop and more importantly, design inspirations. It would really be a pity to miss them.

So I included another Six Fantastic Photoshop Tutorial sites here and make it Part II of the series. I think for Photoshop beginners, it will be very beneficial for you to look at a wide range of sites and get as much information/techniques as possible, and make sure you practive with them. (I’m learning as well as you guys, and this is what I do^^).

OK that’s enough talk, here is the list, enjoy! (Oh by the way, psdtuts.com (now psd.tutplus.com) is THE KING for everything Photoshop, so check it out if you haven’t done so already!)

Blog.SpoonGraphics is the personal project of Chris Spooner, a UK based Graphic and Web Designer. The site acts his digital playground where he presents Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials, free design resources and graphic design related articles.

PSDThemes is a place for who loves webdesign and who wants to learn how to create webdesign concepts and how to be a talented webdesigner with detailed web design tutorials, psd resources, articles, interviews and much more.

With many tutorial websites, they focus only on pageviews. We want to provide quality over quantity and if that provides more pageviews, thats just a plus. As always if you have a certain technique you’ve seen and want to learn it, please visit our contact page, and theres a good change we will turn it into a tutorial.

PS, as you can guess, stands for Photoshop, and although I in no way affiliate with the Adobe company, I try to bring you best of the best of… Photoshop. This blog is dedicated to tutorials, downloads, free brushes, shapes, actions and other application resources. You will also fine a lot of articles about using Photoshop, web graphics, design, news and digital photography… Yep, let’s keep it a bit broad!

This is a reletively new Photoshop tutorial site, but I think it has the potential of becoming a good one in the future. The two tutorials currently on there are of very high quality. Definitely worth looking.

– From James @ psdvault.com

Ok that’s it for Six High Quality Photoshop Tutorial Sites Apart From PSDTUTS.com – Part II! Hope you enjoy those sites and find them useful and inspirational :)

Meanwhile, if you wish sharing other great Photoshop sites with us, simply drop me a comment below.

As I mentioned in Part I, this series is aimed to provide inspirational contents to readers and to give an extra boost for your creativity. For each part, I will be focusing on a specific topic and I will feature design works from fine artists an designers all over the world.

In Part II, we take a look at those design works containing a reletively dark theme. In my opinion, although the dark colour/theme can be a little depressive sometimes, they can always offer a mysterious and gloomy atmosphere and make you feel there are something unique to discover.

OK here it goes the works. I Hope you enjoy this post and let me know what you think of them :)

OK that’s it for Part II of the “Seeking Inspiration” Series. Hope you enjoy those works!

]]>https://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/seeking-inspiration-%e2%80%93-part-ii-the-mystic-darkness-2/feed/0aguswebdesignold_pier_at_dusk_by_denisoliviercathares_study_56_by_etcheparethe_ladder_by_dr4kon65_by_acukurthe-houseat_down____by_alcoveCreate a Crispy-Crust Text Effect with Flower Texture in Photoshophttps://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/create-a-crispy-crust-text-effect-with-flower-texture-in-photoshop/
https://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/create-a-crispy-crust-text-effect-with-flower-texture-in-photoshop/#commentsMon, 12 Sep 2011 12:50:00 +0000http://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/?p=501]]>In this tutorial, I will demonstrate the processes I used to create this Crispy-Crust text effect with flower texture in Photoshop, inspired by Pizzahut’s thin’n crispy pizza base!

From this tutorial, together we can explore the power of blending style options, brush tools, image adjustment tools such as curve and hue tools, and some selection techniques in Photoshop.

Here is a preview of the final text effect:

Version #1

Version #2

Version #3

OK, Let’s get started!

Step 1

Click here to download a copy of flower texture, which will be used later in the tutorial. Feel free to use your own flower image if you like.

Step 2

Create a new document with 800*400px dimension, then use the type tool to type some sample texts. I chose this font for this tutorial, however you may use any font you like in your computer. Please see below images for details of this step:

Text Colour:

Text Position:

After you finish typing and positioning the text, press ctrl+s to save the document as “Flower Text”.

Step 3

Now we can start exploring the power behind the layer blending options in Photoshop! Right-click the “flower Text” layer and select “blending options”, then apply the following blending style to this layer:

Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Contour

Color Overlay

Gradient Overlay

Step 4

Hold Down Ctrl and Left Click the “Flower Text” layer, this will make a selection the text. Your selection will look like the following image:

After you select the text, create a new layer called “flower texture” on top of the “flower text” layer.

Load the flower texture you just downloaded into Photoshop, then go back to the “Flower Text” document and drag the selection (select the rectangle marqee tool from the toolbox, move you mouse over the selection, left click to drag the selection) onto the flower texture document (You can choose anywhere you like). This way we only move the selection, not the image.

On the flower texture document, use Ctrl + C to copy your selection, then go back to the “Flower Text” document, use ctrl + v to paste the selection onto the flower text. Then change the layer blending option to “Lighten” and set an inner shadow for this layer.

Detailed settings please see below:

Layer blending style

Inner shadow

Step 5

After you apply the layer blending styles, go to image > adjustment > Curve and use the curve tool to adjust a bit of the colour contrast. Optional: You may also you hue tool the adjust the colour tone of this layer a bit.

Detailed settings see below:

Curve Tool

Hue/Saturation

Step 6

Duplicate the “Flower Texture” layer twice. keep the “Inner Shadow” blending option enable for the first one, but disable it for the second one.

So far you will have this effect or something similar:

Ok, that’s it for this tutorial! As usual I leave out the rest to your own creativity. Remember, tutorial can only give you inspiration and guideline, you will need to develop your own style and try to be as innovative as possible with your work~

I did two versions of this text effect:

Simply drop me a comment if you have any question or feedback for this tutorial. Cheers and have a great day!

As I mentioned in Part I, this series is aimed to provide inspirational contents to readers and to give an extra boost for your creativity. For each part, I will be focusing on a specific topic and I will feature design works from fine artists an designers all over the world.

In Part II, we take a look at those design works containing a reletively dark theme. In my opinion, although the dark colour/theme can be a little depressive sometimes, they can always offer a mysterious and gloomy atmosphere and make you feel there are something unique to discover.

OK here it goes the works. I Hope you enjoy this post and let me know what you think of them :)

OK that’s it for Part II of the “Seeking Inspiration” Series. Hope you enjoy those works!

]]>https://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/seeking-inspiration-%e2%80%93-part-ii-the-mystic-darkness/feed/0aguswebdesignold_pier_at_dusk_by_denisoliviercathares_study_56_by_etcheparethe_ladder_by_dr4kon65_by_acukurthe-houseat_down____by_alcoveDesign a Dark and Crimson Forest Scene in Photoshophttps://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/design-a-dark-and-crimson-forest-scene-in-photoshop/
https://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/design-a-dark-and-crimson-forest-scene-in-photoshop/#commentsMon, 12 Sep 2011 12:18:25 +0000http://aguswebdesign.wordpress.com/?p=497]]>In this tutorial, I will show you the processes I used to transform an average forest Photo into a Dark and Crimson Forest Scene, inspired by the Japanese Survival Horror Playstation game “Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly”.

We will explore various layer blending options, an interesting way of rendering light and various image adjustment options.

Here is a preview of the the final result:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Download this image off the net and use it as a starting point of this tutorial.

Load the image into Photoshop and duplicate the background layer. Set the blending option of the duplicated layer to “Hard Light”.

Step 2

Duplicate the background layer again and put this duplicated layer on top of the one in the previous step.

Still on this layer, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply the following settings:

Here is the image so far:

Step 5

Now we can add some butterflies on the image. Create a new layer called “Butterfly” and load the “Special Effect Brushes” brush preset (see image below for details):

Paint some butterfly on the image as shown below (be aware that your result may look slightly different to mine because the brush dynamics).

Hint: User the Eraser Tool with 50% opacity and flow to erase some parts of the butterfly to create some depth. You may also hit Ctrl + T to bring up the free transformation Tool to adjust the shape of the butterfly a bit.

After painting the butterflies, set the layer blending option of this layer to “Color Dodge”:

Step 6

We can add some extra lighting effect to image. To do this, create a new layer called “lighting”, use the Rectangular Marquee Tool to make a selection. Fill the selection with black colour:

Maintain the current selection, go to Filter > Render > Fiber and apply the following setting:

You can click on the image to view the work on Flickr and then access author’s flickr homepage.

That’s it for the 12th volume of Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group! Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational. I would love to hear your thoughts of those works, just drop a comment below :)

Step 1

Load the “Eye” stock image into Photoshop, now let ‘s take a look at the original image and here is the analysis I came up with:

The image has a lot of black spots, and bits of hair that really disturbs me

The skin is OK, but if we can make it smoother would be bettter

The eye colour is perferably better in Blue, and those bloodlines in the white part of the eye can go.

After you’ve done the above analysis, duplicate the background layer once and name it as “face skin”let’s grab the Healing Brush tool (J):

Set the brush size to 15px, and hold down the Alt to define a source point as shown below:

Gently work you brush around the spots you wish to heal:

And clean up the lower part of the image as well, until you reach the following effect:

Step 2

Now we have a fairly clean face, let’s tackle the eye. Firstly duplicate the previous “face skin” layer once and name it as “eye”. Firstly we want to get rid of the bloodlines in the eye. To do this, again we use the healing brush tool, define a new source point on this layer as shown below:

Adjust the brush size accordingly to around 10-12px, work your way around the white of the eye until you reach this effect:

Step 3

Now we onto the smoothening of the skin. We have used the healing brush tool before however, for the overall effect, it’s really handy to apply the dodge/burn tool (O):

So duplicate the previous “eye” layer once and name it as “dodge and burn”, use the dodge tool with the following settings:

The secret here to to set exposure level to a very low amount.

Work your dodge tool around the area you want the skin to become smoother and lighter, until you reach the following effect:

Please note, you will have to adjust the brush size for different area, for the best result possible. Practice with it!

Step 4

Ok we can tweak the image a bit by adding some image adjustment layers:

Black and white (Set to blending mode to “Screen”)

Duplicate this Black and White adjustment layer once, and change the blending mode of the duplicated layer to “Hard Light”, you will have the following effect:

Now we’re on the interesting part of changing the eye colour. I simply created a new layer called “eye colour” on top of all other layers, grab a soft, round brush with a light blue colour and paint around the pupil:

Change the layer blending mode to “colour” and you will have to the following effect:

We can now add a shining reflection on the pupil. To do this, create a new layer called “reflection” on top of all other layers, grab a small white brush and paint on the centre of the eye, as shown below:

Step 5

Now we can add some dotty effect around the eye. Firstly let’s make this dynamic brushset:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Other Dynamics

and make sure you tick “Airbrush” and “Smoothing”.

Create a new layer, use this brushset to paint around the eye: (Set brush flow to around 40%)

and we can add a curve adjustment layer to bring some depth into the image:

and you will have the following effect:

We can add some final effect onto our eye. How about some colours?

To add some colour around the eye, simply create a new layer on top of all other layers, set its blending mode to “overlay”, and grab some nice markup colour you like and paint around the eye:

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it, drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.

That’s it for the 11st volume of Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group! Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational. I would love to hear your thoughts of those works, just drop a comment below :)